About Rationally Speaking

Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Podcast Teaser: When smart people endorse pseudoscience

So, it’s very easy to make fun of not-so-educated people who reject evolution, but what happens when one of the most prominent contemporary philosophers writes a book about “What Darwin Got Wrong”? (See my review of that bit of nonsense in Nature magazine.)

Similarly, we can dismiss extreme right wing Republicans like Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, who thinks global warming is a worldwide conspiracy of crazy scientists bent on destroying the American way of life. But what happens when two icons of the skeptic movement, Penn & Teller, do a whole show in which they behave as little more than the mouthpieces (well, piece, since Teller never talks) of the libertarian CATO Institute?

And of course it is easy to laugh at Jenny McCarthy, the kook who claims (with Oprah Winfrey’s support) that she “just knows” that vaccines cause autism. But, what happens when a savvy political progressive and atheist like Bill Maher says that people who get flu shots are “idiots”?

This is the topic of our next Rationally Speaking podcast: why is it that smart people who make it a point of being skeptical and of promoting critical thinking fall for notions that are barely more defensible than astrology (vaccines causing autism), or criticize established scientific notions that are no more “controversial” than the theory of continental drift (climate change, evolution)?

66 comments:

I figured out that P&T were out to lunch way back in 2005 when they brought on Paul Fleiss to explain the evils of Circumcision ... About a month later Eliza Jane Scovill died in his care having never been treated for AIDs, given any vaccinations, having been breastfed, etc, etc, etc ...

Why do smart people such as yourself, Massimo, commit the fallacy of necessity on such a regular and persistent basis? Such as when you don't understand that something you disagree with may be "wrong" because you in fact don't yet fully understand it. Certainly you don't understand how Fodor and other prominent thinkers can see the purposive aspects of evolution without requiring that the long term effects of purposive behaviors be commensurate with the goals that forced the organism to take action. Yeah, I know, you have no idea what I'm talking about.

It's a topic that has bothered me for quire a while now. This is because I have three friends, all of them very competent academics, one of whom believes in homeopathy, one who doubts global warming and one who doesn't see how evolution could possibly work.

Artie...If somebody that has a high statistical probability to be highly intelligent as Massimo is, does not understand the concept that you are postulating... I would say that the onus is on you to make it more understandable.

Using big words and self referential sentences does not make you right. It makes you involuntarily...funny.Why?, because you imply indirectly that YOU understand the idea, and YOU are specially gifted and intelligent over everybody else that is not in your niche(that would comprise 90+% of biologist and a significant % of non biologists). This is exactly the basic reasoning principles that are applied for postulating and hermetically sealing conspiracy theories to any possibility of critique. You "can't" handle the truth, therefore you "can't" see that all of your engineering evidence about 9/11 is biased, is a very similar (in logical construction) to your argument about Fodor's critics just not getting what he wants to say, therefore they must be wrong.

I am not implying that your hypothesis is correct or not ( there is no democracy in science, so having most of the scientist against you does not make you wrong). I am saying that your point of Massimo not "understanding" is logically flawed too. If multiple intelligent people don't "get" your idea, probably it is either wrong, or poorly stated.

And it may well be that Fodor and the other thinkers have actually let some of their biases contaminate their initial assumptions about evolution, therefore spoiling their conclusions (even if the logical process from one to the other is correct). If I get the gist of your statement (and it may be that I don't, as I am most probably not as intelligent as "Fodor and other prominent thinkers"), it seems that they may be making the mistake of assuming there is a "goal-like" quality in any action that the organism takes (yes, they clearly established that they are not IDers so they don't believe in any teleological character to evolution, but they seem to use a proxy by negation concept for this). The organisms may take/have whatever action/fitness character , and the circumstances of the environment (including the organism/other organisms) would probabilistically affect the reproductive efficiency of the organism depending on the whole fo the actions/fitness characters (not only one). If by any chance it would have taken another action, the result may have been different. The effect in the population overall would be what would decide the direction of the evolutionary process, and the characters that were selected. When you analyze it in reverse...well, it actually looks like it has a purposive (arghh) aspect, because you can never see all the other possibilities that did NOT happen.So much fun, to use our tendency to look for patterns everywhere!

I would say in response to the question in the title, that it is mainly because "smart" is a very broad term. As much as we would like to appear differently, multiple behavioral experiments have shown that we have components of our decisions that are not based on rationality. Therefore, certain topics may have aspects of them that are simply too "emotionally charged" for us (emotionally used here as a way of describing something that makes us not be able or decreases our capacity to use our rational abilities to their fullest or correctly). Therefore, for that topic we are not "smart" even if we "conciously" want to.Also using "smart" as such a broad term implies that all of us are logically and philosophically internally consistent. Unless you have spent all your life systematically de-constructing all your values/positions, you WILL, by statistical probability, have internal inconsistencies in your set of values/positions. This will obviously blow up whenever we have these inconsistencies interact with each other while trying to decide our "opinion" in a situation that requires more than one of our values This would therefore cause non-"smart" behaviors/comments/etc.

Hm, this makes me skeptical of the value of the podcast, which otherwise sounds like my cup of tea. The Bill Maher article and statement referenced aren't about being generally anti-vax ("vaccines causing autism"), but about flu vaccines in particular - something a good skeptic should look at before leaping (see http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/11/does-the-vaccine-matter/7723/). Are the other topics going to demonstrate this kind of bait switching, where a demonstrably silly belief is conflated with a merely controversial/skeptical one?

Artie: Massimo does not fail to see that ideas that he disagrees with, generally speaking, can be wrong. He is instead pondering why some very smart public figures endorse ideas that are OBVIOUSLY wrong, ideas that are not "on the table" anymore, so to speak. It is simply not wrong or pretentious to ask these sorts of questions.

uhm, no, I don't see any comparison between libertarianism and astrology in the post. Did I miss it?

Michael,

what's wrong with the CATO is that it is an ideological think tank (just like many others, on the right and the left), not a research institute, and for P&T to pretend that these people are unbiased experts - not to mention not disclosing that Penn is a Fellow of the Institute - is a bit disingenuous, no?

To those who would seem to agree with Massimo that Fodor, the designated smart person for this post, does endorse pseudoscience, and is somehow on the same level of pseudonut as the Inholes and McCarthys, I have no response that they are likely to understand. Since there is nothing, as one said, "obvious" about the alleged similarity of their wrongness.And since the other doesn't get the difference between not understanding and not fully understanding.And since Massimo has now painted himself in the corner where, if it turns out Fodor is righter than he understood, Massimo is then a lot wronger than he would have been if he had simply disagreed with Fodor's reasons rather than with his capacity for reasoning.

"Certainly you don't understand how Fodor and other prominent thinkers can see the purposive aspects of evolution without requiring that the long term effects of purposive behaviors be commensurate with the goals that forced the organism to take action."

Could you please provide an example of or better define "purposive aspects of evolution"?

I've read the bibliography that you have posted Artie (thanks!), except for Ms. Alexander (that is behind a paywall).It seems to me that, as is the case in most philosophical discussions, your difference with Massimo has to do with the definitions you use.Purpose is a very loaded word, mainly in evolution, as it bring us bad memories (creationists, etc). Wheatley seems to be using it more as another way to say "function". Using that definition would lead to a completely different set of conclusions. The same seems to be with Shapiro, that uses "intelligence" as a way of describing systems that are able to respond to complex stimuli and that are themselves comprised of complex subsystems. Shapiro's paper doesn't seem to have any clear association to purposefulness. Neither Lander's, despite of his title. Lander's paper has more to do with the way we can perceive/analyze the complex subsystems in a cell. Grouping them by the end function that they have in the cell, and analyzing it at this level may or may not help in the evaluation of the overall function of the cell, but again, is not associated to "purpose". Analyzing the cooling system of a building as a functional group may give you some extra insights into how it should interact with other systems (insight that you wouldn't get when analyzing the compressor, the tubes, etc). This doesn't really tell you anything about the purpose of the building. Or even of the cooling system, as you when taking the system apart, defined what was the function that you were going to assign to that particular subsystem, then verified if it fulfilled the conditions of your model.And about Mae-Wan Ho's paper...in the beginning when she makes a lot of assumptions a priori, then makes conclusions that try to prove to you that those were right. By far the weakest of the group.I still think that both you and Massimo may have been discussing two different things and thinking that the other doesn't even realize that they are wrong.But you should know that the only one that is right is me! (/irony off). Now back to the real purpose of the thread, bashing poor Maher...no, wait...

Yannis, It's too bad you can't get a look at the full Poetics of Purpose paper - it's one of the best at exploring how and why purpose is necessary to the choice making and goal oriented functions that so far we only find in biological systems. (Assuming the reader would concede that such functions are somewhere to be found at all.)

But Yannis, I have to ask, how can you have concluded that Lander's paper is about functions that are not, as you put it, 'associated to "purpose,"' when he referred specifically to such purpose repeatedly and ended with the following:

'These elements can be seen as the foundations of a new calculus of purpose, enabling biologists to take on the much neglected teleological side of molecular biology. "What purpose does all this complexity serve?” may soon go from a question few biologists dare to pose, to one on everyone's lips.'

Well, nobody is perfect; humans can hold two contradictory opinions at the same time or follow two contradictory philosophies at the same time, as perhaps best illustrated by religious scientists; and, perhaps most importantly, there is just so much knowledge and opinion out there that we cannot, ultimately, expect everybody to look into everything carefully enough, ourselves included. Would, then, there were more agnosticism about things one has not looked into.

Artie:As in a previous, similar discussion, I can only mention that the plants I research certainly do not show purpose in the sense that word is understood among life forms with higher brain functions such as ourselves. Neither in an everyday context nor, especially!, in an evolutionary context. Of course, if you simply define purpose to mean function, well duh, but there is no guiding intelligence behind it because plants and bacteria do not have the abilities that the words "intelligence" and "purpose" were invented to describe.

Oh, and Artie:Patum! Patum! Meristekovje â bleromsk. Yeah, I know, you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Mintman, the fact that you have no understanding of purpose as it applies to plants means you don't accept that plants make functional choices for their own reasons. You have the typical mechanistic view shared by the biologists that Lander was talking about. La rereguarda.

Again, what is a choice in the context of plants? Define it then. Are we talking the decision to grow towards the light instead of towards the darkness? Because that is less a decision than a reaction (as are all things that plants do, what with them lacking a nervous system).

But that is all besides the point; if we are talking evolution, the point would be for a plant to decide to evolve, say, succulence, because it knows that its habitat is going to dry out in the next two million years. And if that seriously is what you propose, then I will carefully step over there, avoid any noises that might startle you and wait for the friendly guys with the straitjackets to arrive...

The plant "decides" to make an attempt to adapt to immediate prospects of environmental change. Shapiro would call that natural genetic engineering.But of course you know more than he does. Or the growing body of those who share those views.And as you seem to have intuited, they all are somehow poor deluded followers of mine.

But then Mintman, certainly you in particular have demonstrated you don't understand how these prominent thinkers can see the purposive aspects of evolution without requiring that the long term effects of purposive behaviors be commensurate with the goals that forced the organism to take action. Not realizing that in your two million years those actions could have the most inglorious of consequences.

this is getting really annoying. Shapiro's and the other's views are nothing new at all. They are simply relabeling a very well known biological phenomenon, and they are doing so by using words that clearly lend themselves to misunderstanding. I suppose they are doing it to grab attention, unfortunately they are misleading people and wasting a lot of valuable time.

Annoying? Your feud with Fodor et al being the exception? Two people fighting for the same space on the public bookshelves can get annoying just by the lack of objectivity required to prolong the dispute.

But then if you think Shapiro and the like are simply relabeling well known phenomenon, and really think that's all there is to it, then of course they are an annoyance. Not very philosophical of you, but understandable.

Artie,Many people appear to have a naive view of natural selection. They think if NS is true, then organisms including humans are passive objects selected by the "whims" of the environment - not subjects acting on their environment. When they realize organisms can alter their environments, they think they have discovered something new. One term associated with this is ecosystem engineer coined in 1994. I don't see how calling a beaver building "purposive" changing anything about our understanding of how NS works.

So, michael fugate, are you telling me that Shapiro, for example, is talking about bacteria altering their environment when he speaks of natural genetic engineering? And here I had thought it was somehow about bacteria participating deliberately in the natural selection process.

And you're saying all those papers I cited were just talking about the likes of purposive beavers and their dam buildings? About a beaver changing its environment to suit, and not about the beavers that experienced those changes passing on the benefits of that experience to their progeny? And not as heritable instincts but as some sort of cultural meme, nonsensical as that seems?

Gee thanks for the biology lesson. Why don't those stupid bacteria get the message and stop all that self selective nonsense. It's so annoying to contemplate.

Artie,You do need a biology lesson, but obviously if it doesn't include teleology, you will just ignore it. All of these things can enhance fitness from a bacteria picking up exogenous DNA or altering DNA repair to a beaver building a dam. Who would currently think that bacteria can't make decisions? Like all cells they have surface receptors that interact with the environment. Everything you bring up is neither surprising nor does speak to something radically new. Why do you think this is different than standard NS as promoted by Darwin and Wallace?

First of all, michael fugate, did I say I thought these ideas were different in a particular way from the NS promoted by Wallace and Darwin? Or claim that the ideas in the papers I referenced for your review originated with little old telos loving me? And did I not specify that the goals that these writers and yes, myself included, make reference to were not the ultimate object or aim of the evolutionary process. Bacteria don't do "ultimate" in case you weren't already aware that they do aim for the preliminarily immediate.But why have you pretended your NeoD quarrel is with me when it's clearly with those I made reference to? Massimo understands that, even if you don't, which us why he calls them relabelers. But you tipped your hand when you mentioned teleology, knowing that all this has little or nothing to do with the beavers be dammed scenario. Because it's actually you who, if it even smells of teleology, must studiously ignore it. Being the good and obedient Weismann-heimer that you clearly are.Write up those proffered biology lessons for the likes of Fodor and Shapiro if you can. Massimo will give you some pointers - or maybe you can give him some.

While I wait for my response to be posted (assuming it will) I'm compelled to add the following:Here's an excerpt from one of the referenced papers that concerns Self-Caused Purpose in biological systems:

"DNA interacts with material in a developmental context mechanistically, serving the purpose of creating a self-organized emergent form. Further development is constrained by the context provided by the form resulting in increasedadaptability. The more plastic form is part of the larger population, for which it serves the purpose of being more advantageous than other forms. These advantages constrain the gene pool, that is, selections are made for the purposes they serve. These constraints help to stabilize the population, further increasing the possible appearance of more of the self-organized types that happen to bemore complex with greater adaptability. Thus, a newly adaptive species does evolve purposefully."

However, this author is more of a gifted writer than a scientist, and in my view doesn't go far enough or deep enough in her summation of the process. For one thing there's a fluidity of purpose involved that is continuously revising its goals dependent on constant feedback from the effects of prior purposive efforts.It's that fluidity that I'd argue makes the process more akin to teleonomy than teleology - although, relabeler that I am, I'd be content to call it willful teleonomy.But I've digressed.

>But there appears to scientific evidence that bacteria have decision making capabilities that have implications for human decision making.<

First of all, the paper is about applying mathematical models to the study of complexity, it does not follow that bacteria "know" things or do things for a "purpose" in anything like the sense in which humans do it.

Second, the authors actually argue that the mindless way in which bacteria make "decisions" is better than the human variety - a highly questionable claim but one that even if true simply does not make the point that Artie has been trying to make on this thread.

That's funny, because I think that your sample paragraph is terribly written. It seems more like an intent to bamboozle the reader into thinking that something profound is going on than a clear and concise idea that warrants being taken seriously (reminds me of certain discussions of postmodernism found here not too long ago). However, from what I understand the central point of that gibberish to be, "relabeling" is the most charitable you can call this enterprise.

Massimo now seems to be saying that even if "mindless" bacteria may do things on purpose, they don't do them anywhere near as well as brainy humans do. (Humans being to a large part composed of bacteria as somehow beside the point.)Perhaps we super-organismic humans see or believe ourselves to be "smarter" than bacteria, and related organisms that make up a large part of our functional structures, through our habitual use of the "might makes right" stratagem. Because when our interests seem to diverge, we can often defeat bacteria by the command of powers that bacteria, by virtue of their size alone, cannot summon up. But when it comes to self-engineering with respect to solving problems relating to all forms of adaptation, and structuring their forms accordingly, and doing so with an uncommon immediacy, they would seem to be our intellectual betters by far.They engineer themselves essentially on purpose while we enjoy the cooperative benefits, under the illusion that since the selves that we are conscious of seem unable to exercise such purposeful change, there's doubtless been some fully accidental process hard at work there.

I think that all the bacteria article is saying is that during times of stress on bacteria, when cell death is almost inevitable, there are a couple of different ways bacteria could survive and pass their genes on to the next generation. First, and most common, sporulate and resume normal mode after the stressor has been removed; second, increase permeability of membranes so that damage may be repaired from the detritus of cells that did die. The second "stategy" (using the language of Game Theory) is riskier, but does allow for a quicker recovery. Bacteria that exhibit either strategy tend to survive in different proportions.There is no bacterium that says to itself "Hmmm, think I'll do the sporulation thing this time". I am reminded of that old song lyric "Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep"; only here I would say "Personification strikes deep. Into your thinking it will creep". Biologists and economists use Game Theory to model or analyze impersonal events. The bacteria have discovered an Evolutionary Stable Strategy that involves multiple solutions to a problem (same as a Nash Equilibrium?)

Bacteria "exhibit" a choice of strategies, except not by any choice they are conscious of making, is that what's being argued here? Begging the question of course as to where they got their strategies to begin with.

Massimo: "First of all, the paper is about applying mathematical models to the study of complexity, it does not follow that bacteria "know" things or do things for a "purpose" in anything like the sense in which humans do it."

This is not correct. The mathematical model that is employed is "game theory" - a theory which specifically evaluates decision-making strategies.

Massimo: "Second, the authors actually argue that the mindless way in which bacteria make "decisions" is better than the human variety - a highly questionable claim but one that even if true simply does not make the point that Artie has been trying to make on this thread."

Perhaps, but one point it does make is that bacteria apparently have some form of rudimentary sentience.

What are the processing units of bacteria that allow for sentience? With only one cell, neurons are out. Even with a nervous system, reflex arcs are not very complicated and don't allow choice. Neither does cell signaling which is how bacteria interact with their external and internal environments. Where and how are bacteria processing these higher order thoughts?

I am getting the feeling that the argument revolves around bacteria having used forms of genetic engineering for millennia only recently understood and applied by humans. This must make bacteria as smart as humans - maybe even smarter - we are just too arrogant to appreciate it.

If this is the case, then isn't it amazing that the sun "figured out" how to perform nuclear fusion billions of years before humans did - not to mention like bacteria before we even evolved! The sun must be much smarter than humans. No wonder people were worshipping the sun.

@michael fugate,There are too many silly assumptions there to allow your questions to be taken seriously. Reflex arcs are all that are there in bacteria, you think? Which even so, facilitate choices, yet don't allow them? And there's cell signaling, but for no decision aiding purpose? And even if there were some assessment going on, it doesn't count if not of the "higher order" variety? And then we jump to the sun and fusion as analogous to what, how much can be accomplished in nature without a calculator? Seriously, is this how you teach biology?

michael fugate: "What are the processing units of bacteria that allow for sentience? With only one cell, neurons are out."

The bacterium is an organic information processing system (or "stimulus-response" system). That is the processing unit that allows for sentience.

The bacterium has receptors that enable it to sense and respond to its environment. Doesn't the capacity of a living organism to sense and respond to its environment provide rational grounds to infer sentient behavior? (For more details, see the article in Science Daily entitled "Bacteria Are Capable of More Complex Decision-Making than Thought")

What choices do these systems allow?You don't know enough biology to understand what you are talking about. When you touch a hot stove, what choice do you have? None, you automatically pull away. There is no choice.A receptor on the surface of a bacterial cell binds with a molecule - depending on the type of receptor - it starts a signaling cascade that makes the bacteria reverse itself if it is a toxin or continue forward if it food. It looks like it is making a decision, but does it really have a choice? Go learn how cells work and don't rely on science journalists to teach you biology. You skipped over too much basic biology. When you can administer an IQ test to a bacteria, let me know how they do.

Why do you need or want "purpose" to be a part of biology? What do you gain?

I was purposely being absurd in the previous post because intelligence is not required for complex activities to take place. Just because something is difficult for a human to understand, doesn't mean that it can't take place without intelligent input.

Unfortunately, the word "sentient" is defined in a way that allows, e.g., science fiction authors to use it in a way synonymous to sapient, so that all this could uncharitably be interpreted as an attempt at obfuscation.

And again, nobody doubts that even primitive organisms are able to react to stimuli from the environment; it is one of the bullet points in the definition of life as it was taught at my university, for example. But if you want to say something new and exciting about evolution, the new and exciting aspect could only ever be that something evolves consciously / teleologically into a certain direction - and come on, not even humans really try to do that, at least since eugenics have been discredited (and it could be argued that even that was a misguided idea that could not possibly work, ever).

So why is Jenny McCarthy 'kooky' and Bill Maher 'politically savvy'? As far as I know they share this one anti-science idea and on every other issue they are eminently reasonable. It seems to me that intelligence has very little to do with it, anyone can be swayed by prejudice, bias, ideology, or logical errors.

It's very easy for anyone to get on the science denial path and once you are on, it's difficult to admit you are wrong - even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

I'd say Michael Fugate and Mintman don't know enough about induction to understand the biological functions that they seem to think are simply void of purpose. And as to what choice you have after you touch a stove, you can choose to let your finger burn, as there have been those that did so. The bottom line is that if an organism has an option, it has a choice. It also has to have the ability to choose the option that lets it live to accidentally touch another stove.

As to choice and all that jazz, here's a paper by some biologists who completely disagree with you two bozos:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1618491/pdf/rsif20050089.pdf

Artie,Calling people names is so mature. It must be why you know so much more than I do. Then again, googling "purpose in biology" won't get you the basic knowledge of biological systems you lack.

You still haven't try to understand how reflexes or signaling cascades work, have you? No matter how hard you try you will pull away when you touch a hot stove. If I snap my fingers in front of your eye, you will blink. Sure you can consciously hold you hand to a hot stove, but that is the brain overcoming the spinal cord. If a molecule binds to a receptor this will induce a conformational change in the receptor leading to a series of signals being sent. It is a not a conscious choice.

The overwhelming majority of activities your body does to stay alive require no conscious choice, no decisions, no thought. If this were not true, you would be long dead because no one can multitask that well. Maintaining homeostasis is mindless and it has to be.

None of your links suggest anything about bacteria making conscious decisions. I am certainly not saying that bacteria aren't extraordinarily complex organisms and they can perform many functions that humans can't perform and/or don't fully understand, but I need some evidence of conscious choice.

I could be wrong, but you seem to be conflating fitness with intelligence or consciousness. Bacteria neither need to be intelligent nor conscious to survive and reproduce. All they need are algorithms coupled to environmental receptors. If X is in the environment, do Y. The response could be to flee if you are motile or build a colony or take in any piece of DNA with which you come in contact.

You need to tell me how bacteria do what you think they do. Just summarize how it takes place for me - no links to papers - just your own understanding please.

But the research scientists in the two articles I cited most certainly do.

michael fugate: "It looks like it is making a decision, but does it really have a choice?"

Question: Do human beings really have a choice? Or, does it merely look like they are making decisions?

You have just argued (probably unwittingly) that free will is incompatible with determinism. Okay, let us assume (for the sake of argument) that we live in a completely deterministic world (even though there is scientific evidence to the contrary) and that all biological organisms are merely organic robots, then what have we established? We have established that freedom of choice is not required for sentience. Now, having said that, I would appreciate it if you would kindly address the question I posed in my previous post: "The bacterium has receptors that enable it to sense and respond to its environment. Doesn't the capacity of a living organism to sense and respond to its environment provide rational grounds to infer sentient behavior?"

Just FYI. Merriam-Webster defines "sentient" as "responsive to or conscious of sense impressions."

michael fugate: "Why do you need or want "purpose" to be a part of biology? What do you gain?

What do I gain? Rationality and creativity. I honestly cannot see how anyone can profess to have a modicum of rationality or creativity if he sincerely believes that he is incapable of purposive behavior. And make no mistake about this, that is exactly what you are implying here...that you are incapable of purposive behavior and therefore that you are incapable of rationality and creativity.

Mintman: "Unfortunately, the word "sentient" is defined in a way that allows, e.g., science fiction authors to use it in a way synonymous to sapient, so that all this could uncharitably be interpreted as an attempt at obfuscation."

I do not have a problem with Merriam-Webster's definition of the term "sentient."

Mintman: "And again, nobody doubts that even primitive organisms are able to react to stimuli from the environment; it is one of the bullet points in the definition of life as it was taught at my university, for example."

Responding to environmental stimuli is sufficient evidence to infer sentience.

michael fugate, if you recall, both of you have earlier been somewhat rude to me, so a bozo is as a bozo does.As to choice, we have reflex systems that for one, protect us from mistakes in choices - without choosing the action that ended up at the stove, we wouldn't have needed the protective reflex.And what's your problem with links to papers by the very biologists you claim wouldn't write such drivel? I've already said what I feel the need to in my own words, and then of course you've asked for papers to back it up. Remember? .Now for once you've said something almost right - that all bacteria need is algorithms coupled to environmental receptors. These are, in my own words, strategic algorithms, and where do you think they came from if not from prior experiences of earlier forms of bacteria? (From some god perhaps?)But these algorithms contain the instructions for optional choice making when faced with expected and unexpected signals from their receptors. And as one biologist, D.S.Wislos writes, the key concept here is called phenotypic plasticity. He says, 'No organism is so simple that it is instructed by its genes to “do x”. Even bacteria and protozoa are genetically endowed with a set of if-then rules of the form “do x in situation 1”, “do y in situation 2” and so on. These rules enable organisms to do the right thing at the right time, not only behaviorally but physiologically and morphologically.'If you don't understand that such instructions are basic to all choice making functions, including ours, go talk to Wilson and the other big boys in the field. Clearly anything I've been able to say has had no effect. My guess is that you can't think for yourself and only bow to arguments that you are sure come from authority.And to require that a choice be conscious or it isn't choice is ridiculous. Plus who are you to say that bacteria are unaware of the stimuli that provokes their actions? Numerous studies have concluded that they have a sense of place with respect to sources of the stimuli, and that in this sense they are aware. But then you won't agree because I haven't produced the papers.And how do they do what they do? I wish I knew because they do a lot of it much better than we've been able to.

I misspelled Wilson as Wislos, but got it right later. I should also add that instead of just having rules of the form “do x in situation 1”, “do y in situation 2” and so on, I've found such algorithms to be multi strategic and with additional rules like “do x strategy in response to y strategy, and y strategy in response to z strategy."Hope that helps.

Okay, so it is just being able to react to the environment. Fine. If that is your definition, you are completely right that it is possible, factual, and accepted by renowned biologists.

Then, however, you are also completely wrong about it being "increasingly" accepted or being something interesting and new. Virtually every biologist in human history would have agreed - again, this is part of the definition of what life is, which is also why viruses are generally not accepted as life forms. Hell, Ug the caveman could have told you that other organisms show purposive behaviour in that sense! (Admittedly, he would not have known this preposterous word itself, he would not have known bacteria, and he would also have ascribed purposive behaviour to storm clouds, but that is another issue). This isn't news, this is well, duh!

However, you have very likely purposefully invited the misunderstanding this whole discussion is based upon by writing, and I cite your first response here: purposive aspects of evolution. Being able to use a different biochemical pathway under certain conditions, or reorganizing your colony structure is not evolution. Evolution is the change of lineages of organisms over generations, and the assumption that a plant or bacterium evolves with a self-chosen purpose is completely ridiculous, even before you realize that evolution as we understand it today (mutation + selection) is a purposeless process very much by definition. If you add purpose, it becomes breeding (artificial selection) instead of evolution (natural selection).

Except that it would appear that in the case of bacteria, it's also selection-mutation. And if it's agreed that bacteria and other life forms have survived by learning from experience, no matter how rudimentary the retention apparatus, then they have made choices by selecting the relevant data to retain out of whatever they have experienced. Unless the contention is they remember everything they've felt. And there are those who would add that the selective retention was for a purpose - but that would be wrong.

Let me put this general question out there as to your denial of any purposive aspects of evolution, and more specifically, as you just specified, natural selection.Is natural selection to be viewed as a mechanism, and does that mechanism then have a function (as mechanisms are wont to have)? And does not a function by definition either have or serve a purpose?And if only in service of one, what or whose purpose would that be - God's, Nature's or the organism's? Or all of the above, or two out of three, or none? And can it serve Nature's without the organism's, if organisms are Natures children?And if natural selection serves none of these, can we properly call it either a mechanism or a function?

Are you sure Bill Maher and Penn Jillette are smart?Anyways, James Randi said that smart people are easier to fool because they're quick to assume things and they think they're too smart to be fooled.A lot of the stupidity is due to bias, going outside the area of expertise, and misjudging which sources are credible.

I haven't taken Bill Maher seriously since loosing a precious two hours of my life watching his movie "Religulous". I'm an atheist but I was disgusted by his callous dismissal of regular, flawed believers. He interviewed interesting people but edited out most of their words and bored us with his own egocentric ramblings. I hope someday a good film editor gets ahold of his original footage and re-edits it into an informative investigation of why people believe, or even a funny but deep debunking of belief. I don't think "smart" and "stupid" are the most meaningful categories to put people into; still I have to say that "smart" isn't one of the first few words that come to mind when I think of Bill Maher.